La Résurrection
by Raggedy Nib
Summary: Christine returns to bury her angel alongside her past. When she finds the Phantom very much alive, fear turns to love. Despair gives way to a consuming passion. Leroux & Kay with some ALW influences.
1. Prologue

_G. Carrière_

_Windamere Hotel_

_Observatory Hill, Darjeeling, India_

_734101_

Gus,

Remember how we were banking on clearing the vaults of the chateau? I know what you're thinking! But it's truly not as hopeless as it sounds. Not a bit of use them since the occupation, so I had figured we would make them count for something after a thorough cleaning.

Addie managed to dig up a pile of old clippings during the cleanout, and I'd figure you would want to take a look at them. An obituary included no less! With quite a familiar name, wouldn't you say?

You'll remember the strange affair of the mysterious person of interest in the Opéra Garnier? Read on, dear sibling!

Give all my love to Fatima and the baby. Those photographs you've sent don't even begin to cover how quickly he's growing! He has that Carrière look about him already.

9th of May, 1948

-Tee

_C. Chéret_

_157 Avenue de Montredon_

_Marseille, France_

_13008_

* * *

_A.N – All credit goes to Gaston Leroux, Susan Kay, and Andrew Lloyd Webber for their respective ownership of the content used._


	2. I

Chapter I

The great Opéra de Paris rose out of the cobbles and chaos of the intersecting streets. Not so chaotic if one were to consider the hour at the time of this strange event.

A coach halted on the Rue Scribe side of the massive structure, its driver scrambling from his bench to handle the parcels and valise off of the back compartment for the convenience of the genteel customer. The door opened and soon a lady's boot was setting itself down on the rickety step of the conveyance. Then, a fine hem dropped to cover the striped stockings that sheathed the well turned ankles sticking from the boot. Another boot joined its mate on the step, legs tapering up to a corseted waist and a flaring bust.

It was there that the visible body ended and a tulle veil began. It draped about the lady's shoulders artlessly from a wide brimmed tea hat. That confection of feathers and yards of lace would've caught the eye of many a socialite if it weren't for the ungodly hour the wearer chose to parade about in it.

A parish bell tolling the hour of four in the morning would've given the indication that the lady in question was behaving rather oddly in traveling at this time of night. The lady would simply brush off their silent critiques if any passerby should sight her. The coachman would keep his comments to himself after the substantial fare she had paid him at the start of the journey from Orléans. A following tip after all her personals were set down on the street would ensure his silence.

After the coach had rumbled away on the slick cobbles of the street, the lady took up her one valise and carefully balanced the handle of it in her gloved fist. The stoop she had chosen as her mock destination to throw off any unwelcome questions from the coachman was abandoned in favor of a nearby grille. It was an unassuming thing built into the foundation of the opera house, and could simply be mistaken as a ventilation shaft for the cellars and vaults below. Far from it, the woman thought.

That delicate hand now twisted a great key into an obscure catch hidden in the ironwork, forcing the thing open with a surprisingly quiet squeak. She knew the hinges to be well oiled by the one who used the gate most. A quick glance of the dimly lit street from beneath the veil told the lady that no one was observing her.

After shoving her meager belongings through with a booted heel, she followed promptly into the dark space and secured the catch. It was then that she leaned back against the metalwork of the gate, her chest expanding and contracting as a great rush of air stirred the veil covering her mouth.

"Down once more," said the woman under the veil with a resigned air. A sloping stairway descended into the blackness below, but the way was known to this lady.

For you see, Christine Daaé had returned.

* * *

_A.N – All credit goes to Gaston Leroux, Susan Kay, and Andrew Lloyd Webber for their respective ownership of the content used._


	3. II

Chapter II

They say the death rattle has a very distinct sound; an accumulation of fluids in the throat causes the esophagus to work even harder to pass air through the fluted tube until the patient asphyxiates.

Or so the book had told her.

Christine had read through every medical text to be found in Erik's home by now – _Erik, Erik, Erik_, her mind would repeat like a mantra – in the hopes of being better equipped to deal with any sort of emergency should the need arise. The Persian had been making regular visits during the week, helping to keep Christine on some semblance of a schedule as there was no day or night in the sublevels of the opera house – only darkness.

She had arrived at the house on the lake expecting a corpse and found one. Albeit an animate one. He was in a peaceful repose on the settle in the drawing room just as she walked in. It had brought a shriek from her mouth, startled him from his sleep, and caused an unholy ruckus from Ayesha.

His mask was off, but the horror of walking in on a _possibly_ dead Erik was reining her in from more hysterics over his deformities. Soon he had clasped the mask back onto his face and rose unsteadily. Partly because of the ungodly amount of morphine charging through his lanky frame, but mostly because of disbelief as to who was standing in his doorway. He knew that shriek anywhere.

"Erik?" said the angel, her veil fluttering up over that ridiculous hat.

He fell away in a dead faint. She chalked it up to shock, but from the state of his kitchen she would chance a guess and say that he was slowly starving himself into weakness. The empty bottles of strange smelling serum were quite the smoking gun as well. Later in the night – after she had gotten a hold of him under his arms and dragged him to her own bed – she had received a visitor at the door.

"Erik! I know you're languishing in there! Let me in for a cup of tea and I won't quip about how rank you smell at the moment," said the accented voice on the other side.

No snappy comment spiced with curses and 'damnable Daroga' followed. That was not a sign of good omens, in the Persian's opinion. Nadir Khan was a reasonable man trying to talk down a very unreasonable man from what he thought was a perfectly rational way to perish. Death by love seemed so melodramatic and fantastical to the pragmatic foreigner, but it was reality. Erik was slowly dying of a broken heart.

Not to mention enough morphine to take down a bull elephant.

It came as a complete surprise when the catalyst for all this fuss opened the door to his insistent knocking.

He didn't know whether to send up praise or dread what was coming for his old friend. For when Mlle. Daaé came around, trouble surely followed. What followed was an awkward exchange of information, both of them comparing notes as to what state their mutual acquaintance was in. The small parcel of market goods Nadir had brought along was added to the slowly filling cupboard before they decided to brave the lion's den and chance a look at Erik.

Speech had fled his range of abilities, it seemed. They couldn't coax a word from him. After Christine had brought the tiny vials clustered in her hands to the Persian for explanation, she was made privy to a startling fact.

Erik was one of the worst opium addicts the Persian had ever had the misfortune to encounter. After picking up the habit in his native land, he told Daaé, the talented magician had taken up morphine to save his voice from the dangers of inhaling the opium.

Withdrawal from any opiate was a frightful occurrence to witness. The Persian – M. Khan, as she had learned from him – would come every thirty-six hours to give an increasingly smaller dose to Erik. If not weaned gradually off of it, Khan had explained, Erik's body would violently rebel as it now craved and required the morphine to function properly. The Persian would start the simple procedure by tying off a tourniquet and thumping the inside of Erik's arm, blue veins pulsing to the surface of the ghastly pale skin.

Christine had to overcome minor queasiness during the first few sessions she witnessed, especially when the needle would slide home into the flesh of the Phantom. That had sent the singer reeling into the bath, quietly losing her lunch to the toilet with as much dignity as she could muster.

* * *

_A.N – All credit goes to Gaston Leroux, Susan Kay, and Andrew Lloyd Webber for their respective ownership of the content used._


	4. III

Chapter III

The diva had acquainted herself with every required inch of his body, knowing well enough to keep away from his face save when mopping his brow with a wet cloth. She'd turn her head politely away whenever she removed the mask to wash the skin beneath, doing so by touch alone. Such strange contours and curves of the flesh beneath were frightening to map in her mind, but after a week of going through the motions she was accustomed to them. That began the anatomical memorization of her angel's body – a sinful deviation. The young Daaé had nearly turned her head off her spine when it came to washing _beneath _the waistline of the maestro.

He was surely thin. Some would call it skeletal, but even Christine could see evidence of lean, wiry flesh on the long bones. Corded muscles ran along the length of his limbs to the long feet and extraordinary hands. Those she indulged in; every night, Christine would examine every lithe digit down to the wideness of his palms. Every mark told a story – from the rough calluses on the pads of his fingers to the tiny scars that crisscrossed the backs of his hands. There was no thickness or bluntness to them, only spidery fingers and fleshy palms worked to thinness from countless hours dedicated to his dexterous craft. Blood did not reach them so well, as they were constantly cold and downright icy to the touch at times.

The same could be said for his feet! Ice cold but still beautifully formed with long toes slanting down. You could make out every bone beneath, like a structure of strong framework thinly blanketed by the translucent skin. Rising up were strong, lean calves dusted with fine hairs and well-muscled thighs.

Christine fancied him a swimmer.

If God had destroyed his face in Erik's creation, God had amended his error by giving the man a beautiful body. His broad, thin shoulders veered into such a trim waist that it made even her jealous. A smattering of dark chest hairs trailed along to his navel, picking back up again to descend in a line towards _that_ part of him. Sheets covered the dangerous territory for the better part of the time.

Her eyes would always dart to his face covered in the mask, fearful that she'd meet with the cat eyed gaze of her impromptu patient during her perusals of his form. It was a sunken and haunted gaze – hypnotic to her. If one would draw close enough, you could make out the golden tint of the iris.

She had put him in her bed for convenience's sake and kept to the settle for any rest. Besides the impractically of the coffin, the room and object in question were sinister enough to not even let her mind entertain the idea of sleeping there. The _Dies Irae _added to that gloom. The Requiem Mass that Mozart had composed in the single night before his demise was an ominous choice to be hanging on your bedroom walls, in her humble opinion. Though the Phantom she knew was never particularly cheerful, he did have his own brand of darker humor. There was an ironic sarcasm to be found between her maestro's corpselike appearance and his choice of beds – but the reasoning for it brought those strange pangs to her chest.

He fully intended to lie down and die in it one day.

As Christine came into the Louis-Philippe room with the washbasin balanced in her hands brimming with hot water, she caught sight of one of the most amusing things she'd seen in weeks. There was Erik's beloved cat. Blue-eyed and sleek, Ayesha was curled on her master's stomach. Rising and falling with his very breath and practically vibrating with purrs, she seemed completely content with the world at the moment.

Ayesha was fearless. And such a sassy thing to boot! When Christine had first come into Erik's home, the cat had ignored her as if she was simply an additional piece of furniture added to her domain. Never too fond of cats, Christine had shrugged off the indifference. Only jealousy bubbled up when Erik would handle his beloved companion with those _hands_.

With her master incapacitated and mostly unresponsive save for the times he would rouse out of his sleep to use the facilities, Ayesha was starting to come to terms with Christine as a companion of necessity. During her downtime, the sleek Siamese would share space with Erik's former pupil on the settle or armchair. Never quite touching on a regular basis, but Christine could accept the quiet company in the lonely home.

The cat was shooed to parts unknown so Christine could wash his body in peace. Thankfully it was only his chest and underarms that needed tending – he'd been sweating in the feverish gripes once more.

Wracking chills and cramps plagued her maestro as the drug tried to master its slipping hold on him. During these spells where pain would have a hold on him, she would sing. Everything from folksongs meant for horse fairs to the great arias she had once sung on stage. It had a calming effect.

* * *

_A.N – All credit goes to Gaston Leroux, Susan Kay, and Andrew Lloyd Webber for their respective ownership of the content used._


	5. IV

Chapter IV

He barely spoke, grimfaced with the prospect of the reaper coming early for the toll – his life. It was during one of her serenades that he first broke the long silence between the two of them. Midway through Marguerite's aria from Gounod's _Faust_ – a lively choice, she would admit – a shaking hand came up to halt her rising voice.

It was her voice that had dragged him from his stupor. His siren song. _Any_ song or sound that came from those lips had a powerful pull on his very soul. At his bedside was his angel, worn and weary with toil. Toil over _him_. A fizzle of selfish greed rose in his gut.

"You're falling flat on the fifth measure, Christine. Bring it from your core; let it hold on the edge of your tongue." His voice was still angelic to her ears. An indescribably beautiful tenor with just the right rough edge to it – his speaking voice was enough to make her knees knock.

Ever the apt pupil, she corrected herself and soared on the high notes beautifully. The last trill of the aria hummed into the air without flaw.

"Sublime," he muttered.

Her thoughts spun off into a completely direction that was devoid of music as the sheet slipped from his chest to pool around his waist. Well – a different sort of music, one could argue.

It was enough to have every blessed inch of such a body laid out before her. But a line was breached when that prone masterpiece was given motion. His stomach flexed the hardened muscles beneath, tensing in the effort to sit upright.

The singer managed to wrench her eyes away from the display and busy herself with rearranging the pillows behind him. He waved her off after she'd fussed over him, a high color coming to his sallow cheeks beneath the mask. The wounded look on her face struck him enough to force an explanation.

"I've…never had anyone tend to me during an illness. One of my own doing, no less."

That admission was followed by a pregnant pause, both their eyes drifting towards the shut box filled with the morphine vials and the assorted paraphernalia.

"Why are you not above with your Vicomte? Or is it Comte now? Shall I call you _Comtesse_ de Chagny?" His voice should've held its usual bite when discussing her state of affairs with Raoul, but all the spite seemed to be drained from him. What that remained was weary resignation.

Her shoulders rose and fell like an undulating wave, hiding that mystery that was her emotion just as well as the tides obscure what lay beneath them.

"Call me what you will, Erik."

She left him to his tray, the glint of that simple golden band adorning her left hand catching his keen eye.

Well, that had sufficiently piqued his curiosity. The Phantom dug into his dinner with a renewed gusto, intent on rising from his damnable sickbed and furthering this investigation into Christine's questionable state of marriage.

Or lack thereof.

His heart longed for the latter to be true.

* * *

_A.N – All credit goes to Gaston Leroux, Susan Kay, and Andrew Lloyd Webber for their respective ownership of the content used._


	6. V

Chapter V

Cesar whickered in a hearty greeting to Christine as she drew close to his enclosure. Erik kept the area well lit with gas lamps, fearful that if left in the dark for so long the magnificent beast might founder or lose its sight. Christine had always been fond of the stallion for as long as she'd been at the opera house – his entrances into _Il Profeta_ were always something to behold. It amazed the young singer how well the horse took to the boards of the stage and the stone flooring of the vaults.

His arched neck was poised over the low stone wall of the enclosure, quite happy for the company and the treat Christine had pocketed on her way out of the house. She couldn't be cooped up in there forever. These walks were always refreshing, despite the lack of moving air found aboveground. Or rain. Sunlight. The shine of the moon. Those little things she took for granted.

M. Khan had taken over the task of bringing back what was needed from aboveground. She had insisted on compensating him for the loss of coin with franc notes from her own purse, but he had shaken off her off with a warm smile.

Raoul had given her more than enough money to last the month in a much more lavish style. For all he knew, she was still with Mama Valerius. Forging that urgent letter had been probably the worst thing Christine had ever done. But it still served its ultimate purpose in granting her the freedom to leave the Chagny estate and catch the evening train into Orléans.

She could no longer sing for others if she were to go through with the marriage. Christine would be restricted to entertaining only those of equal class in their homes or in her salon. In fact, the dowager Comtesse was insisting that her upcoming daughter-in-law give up the _dalliance_. Dear, sweet Raoul had sat her down and informed her of these conditions with the utmost honesty.

But she could not sing? Singing was the very air she breathed into innermost self. She would suffocate if she went without. Such a thing was the consequence of being the protégé of a man who was sustained by music alone.

When Christine had entered the Conservatoire, all the passion had fled from her voice and self. She'd dutifully gone to her lessons and took away only one prize after completing her training, but her heart was far from it all. The keen ache of loneliness after her father's passing had swamped her. By the time she had come to the opera house, her voice was reduced to the quality and consistency of a rusty hinge groaning under the weight of a door. Brooding and skulking about the place, she did. Ambition was drained from her.

Then, a miracle occurred right in her very dressing room. The voice had brought her out of the gloom and into a brilliant world of sound and color. Soon she was being singled out as a rising promise in the company, eventually replacing La Carlotta! It was more than she could've ever wished for.

The diva had laughed off Raoul that night knowing that her angel was well within earshot. Even eyeshot, one could say. Her dressing room was like a pretty glass box which the Angel of Music could view at his leisure…and all happenings within it. That thought always had sent a tingling up her spine as she laced herself out of the trappings of her clothes, thinking that the strange angel that taught her was watching.

Did seraphic beings lust for lowly mortals like her, she had wondered? Or were his intentions purely platonic? The keen ache at the crux of her thighs and the dampness she probed with shaking fingers after his visits certainly weren't platonic responses to her tutor's voice. It was if she shed girlhood at the door and came into the room as a woman. With that new role came womanly urges. Lustful, jealous, wicked urges that permeated the goodness of her.

Could she have ignored the thrill of discovery when the voice harshly demanded that she devote her life solely to the music? Threatening that if she were to take up the earthly delights of a marriage bed, she would force his hand and he would return to the heavens? She wasn't so simple that she could not hear the tone of possessive force in his passionate speech.

Christine Daaé thought herself a gullible girl at times. Some of the more vindictive ballet rats had called her spare during her time in the corps de ballet. During the last months at the opera, she was certain that she was a touch mad.

Mad enough to flee from a blooming desire and into the arms of her childhood love.

Was the passion she had felt for her angel so frightening that she sought the first way out when it stumbled upon her? The out in question was the renewed affections of the Vicomte de Chagny. If she had been a simple chorus girl with no distinguishable voice and an obscure role, their circumstances might've been different. But the fact of reality was this – she was center stage for all to see on that night. Raoul had recognized her and sought out his childhood playmate.

Christine was brought out of her reverie when a warm, velveteen muzzle mouthed at her sleeve. She gave the horse a quiet pat before making her way back to the lakeshore. A short while later she was seated in the dining room, enjoying a simple meal of bread and cold soup.

A quiet sigh interrupted her brief repast as the sound drifted down the hall and into the dining room. Throwing his voice, she wondered? She downed the rest of her wine and put away her dishes before padding down the hall to investigate.

No. Erik was truly dead to the world. Numb enough in his sleep that the black silk of his mask had slipped off. The tripping beat in her chest thumped unevenly against her ribs, but Christine held in the gasp and breathed hard through her nose until the unpleasant shock wore off.

Approaching his bed with as much caution as she could muster, Christine observed his easy posture and slack features. No chance of him waking up anytime soon – the morphine dose from earlier kept him under well enough.

She sent up a quick prayer as climbed quietly onto the end of the bed. The bedstead made a small support for her back as she settled in, but the boning of her pesky corset was soon digging into her side. Christine ignored the discomfort, resolved to follow through with this task she set for herself.

If there was any way to grow accustomed to his face, it was this way. Christine was determined to sit here all night and memorize every superficial imperfection that made Erik.

There was nothing beautiful about his deformity. Erik lacked a portion of his nose. The half-formed bridge was covered with a false structure that he wore often, but mostly he went without while under the full mask. Absent from his nose was the prosthetic, the gory sight of raw skin and the gaping holes of the nasal cavities exposed completely. The skin around the eyes and across his cheeks was jaundiced to the tint and texture of old parchment, thin beneath her fingers. Thin enough to cling to every bone and ligament beneath it. In that he had his claim to fame – the death's head.

His forehead fared little better, coming away with the tinge of whatever was affecting the lower portion and hidden under a few dark forelocks. Hair grew, but it was shot through with grey and thinning at the top. It seemed thicker and healthier further back on his skull – the color dark to her eye.

Eyes were always such an expressive part of a body. Erik's were no different. Dark as pitch in the day, but alight with gold in the night.

He was as pale if not paler than her.

As her eyelids drooped, the little porcelain clock she had brought chimed six in the morning from the dining room. Hours of straining her sight took its toll as the singer nodded off to sleep.

It was the first time Erik had slept with a woman.

For Christine, it was the first time she'd lain with a man.

He didn't even notice.

* * *

_A.N – All credit goes to Gaston Leroux, Susan Kay, and Andrew Lloyd Webber for their respective ownership of the content used._


	7. VI

Chapter VI

The chiming of the clock woke her many hours later. It was enough of a shock to scare her from the bed, frightened that Erik had caught her in the act.

The prima donna was not confident in predicting how he would react to her uninvited examination – the Phantom was a man of passionate and violent tempers, prone to a fit or two if the occasion called for it.

Morphine being a faithful aid to his recovery, he slept on in a drugged haze. All the bedclothes and pillows remained exactly where they were when she had first come into the room. Even the mask lay unmoved on the crook of his shoulder.

Ayesha's loud protests at lounging on an empty stomach were chorusing from the kitchen, so Christine made herself scarce in favor of less hazardous pursuits.

The evening carried on in the usual manner. She hovered over a letter to Raoul with a pen before she abandoned that hopeless cause. Soon enough he'd expect her to return south to the estate while she was quickly running out of new excuses to delay the inevitable.

What frightened her so terribly, she wondered. Was it the control? Maybe the constraints of such a title she would inherit by proxy? Never in all her years did she think she would marry so well. There were prospects and a long list of stage performers who became almost royalty through connections made through the theater.

Every girl from the ballet corps to the dressers had an idol to venerate. Some lucky ballerina or prima donna who was swept into a fairytale ending practically became canonized amongst those wide-eyed dreamers. They became legend amongst the female populace of the opera houses across Europe.

In all her years, Christine had never imagined she'd fall into those circumstances and make such a good marriage with such a fine man. A Comte, no less.

The title itself brought with it a surging sense of guilt. Philippe's death hung like a dead goose over the de Chagny household – some excuse had been conjured about how the Comte took leave of his faculties and sought out his missing brother in the wrong place at the wrong time.

'He had fallen on his neck at an odd angle and drowned' was the running story. She couldn't help but feel a bit responsible for his fate.

"Fiddles and sticks," Christine cursed under her breath. Her only option was to fetch something from Erik's closet, unless she wanted to waltz around in thin petticoats.

The raid on his closet was a success and more than a little enlightening. Christine discovered that Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, was a clotheshorse. Racks upon racks and shelves upon shelves of garments lined the tight space of his dressing room. She didn't dare linger. Instead, she quickly located the rattiest lawn work shirt she could find before skittering back out into the hall.

Erik did not constantly live in dress clothes, it seemed. Comfortable slippers and banyans were his forte, owning at least a dozen of each in a variety of dark colors. Even one in a lovely shade of green!

That one in particular had been commandeered for her own use. It swallowed her completely and had at least a foot's length of excess fabric at the hem like the shirt, so firmly bunching and belting it around her waist was required before attempting any sort of movement.

A quick peek at the doorway to the Louis-Philippe room and the quiet coming from it took a load off her mind. The charge slept on while she took her stroll.

The patient Phantom didn't move until he was sure the front door had quietly clicked shut. The little shadow game Christine had cast on the hallway wall had brought a quirk to his mouth.

She had been scrambling this way and that to find clothes, he guessed. All of her fine dresses he had collected for her were still in _this _room. She was far too polite to interrupt his rest just to fetch a frock that wasn't work stained.

His footing was a bit steadier as he advanced barefoot through the house and into the cool dark of the cavern. Christine was nowhere to be found, but that didn't raise much alarm in his mind.

For the foreseeable future, she had no intention of leaving him. All of the traps were either out of her usual walking paths or disabled. That left him with the solitude of the lake and free of one strict nursemaid.

The water was cool at this time of year. Not quite the freezing temperature it had been at the start of spring. He contemplated inspecting the steam pumps and pistons on the small boiler he had installed on the far side of the house. Providing the main water from the lake, it filtered and heated the raw water in the contraption before funneling it into the pipe system that laced under the floor of his home.

The floor was warm enough from the pipes to where Christine would shuck off her shoes or slippers to walk barefooted on the warm panels and tiles. It was her little secret, so she thought. Her skirts didn't drag on the floor and hide her indulgence all the time like she thought they did, though.

Instead he rolled up the legs of his trousers to fit tightly around his knees, wading out 'til he was waist deep in the ebbing flow of the lake. Besides the complete and utter darkness of the place save for the few gas lights near the house, it really was ideal for swimming.

The only thing that might unnerve a topside dweller would be the unending blackness of the glassy surface. You could never tell how far the lake stretched on or how deep it was set into the bedrock of the earth. Erik knew every inch of the vast thing.

His breathing was controlled as the cold seeped through to his skin – head tipping back as the sting burned into an easy sensation of coolness twining around him.

It was then that he discovered Christine was not on her evening stroll. A gentle ripple of water and a sharp gasp of air not far down the shore broke the tranquility.

There she was, rising from the water like some lissome nymph of Arcadia. In his shirt. Soaking. That pesky spinning in his brain was back to plague him yet again. Swallowing past the thick knot that had gathered in his throat, he willed his legs to bring him closer.

Her head shot up at the slight noise he made. A pair of golden orbs stared unblinkingly at her in the dark.

"Erik!" she yelped, her legs kicking feebly as she sought out a purchase on the sandy bottom. The water was well over her head, but she was a decent enough swimmer from her times on the coast.

Soon she was wading into the shallower waters near him – at least, she thought it was closer. She could barely see a few paces beyond herself in this kind of darkness. His glowing eyes were the only marker for her hampered vision.

"What on earth are you doing out here?" she asked, wringing out the dripping tails of his shirt.

"I could ask the same of you," he shot back, a ripple of water that brushed the tops of her thighs suggesting his movements around her. A cold, long hand seized her wrist to raise it high enough to her eyes to where they could both see it. The golden band did not shimmer with the lack of light, but it was visible.

"You've kept your promise." He sounded almost amazed. Christine scoffed. The morphine had worn off enough to return him to a lucid state.

"Could I go back on my word?"

"You've been known to flutter those lashes and speak pretty lies to slavish adorers, Christine."

"A double standard. I don't know whether you mean Raoul or yourself."

He threw his head back in a laugh, but the sound came out cold and harsh to her ears. A disembodied hand connected to a pale wrist and forearm were all that she could see in the dark. Those and the glaring, devilish eyes.

"I almost took you for surprised when you found me still breathing. Shall I relieve you of your burden?"

"If that's a threat on your life Erik, I'll go fetch M. Khan and we can talk this out evenly matched." A feeble pull at the grip on her wrist proved that any fetching wouldn't be possible under these circumstances. Erik was twice her size and still was freakishly strong, even in this weakened state.

"Silly girl. I meant that as an invitation to return you to the surface," he gritted out between his teeth.

"Enough! For all your genius, you're terribly shortsighted when it comes to the simplest of things! Your vice got me into this mess, and I intend to set things to right before you rot in your own self pity." Her eyes were alight with a newfound fury. His Christine had grown.

Those cold fingers were at her throat, skimming the slim column to catch her stubborn chin in a hard grip. His burning eyes drew closer and hot breath bloomed on a parted mouth. Erik had worshiped every aspect of Christine's physical form, but those rosy lips that quirked and curved and strained had always been an obsession for him.

A droplet of water made its trek from her cheek to ease onto the bow of her small mouth, trembling before taking the slope towards the tight line of the lower lip. He was enraptured.

Kisses were a customary greeting in many cultures, taken for granted because of their regularity. What he thought as his first and final kiss occurred not but a few weeks ago, bestowed by the very lips that quivered mere inches away from his own.

"And how long will the martyr stay below with the monster?" he wondered aloud.

"For as long as it takes," she murmured into the dark air between them. A breathless moment passed and suddenly his lips were closed over that parted mouth, taking instead of receiving.

For all her fury, Christine did not draw back from the stolen kiss. Sharp nails dug into his shoulders as she hauled him down for a fiercer press of teeth, tongue, and flesh. The first thing he could register in his mind was the softness and sweetness of those lips– like the petals on a rose. Wetness mingling on their tongues and he tentatively swept out his out to twine with her dainty muscle.

Instinct seemed to seize them both, spidery hands roaming to the curves of her hips and the pert swell of her rear. She made the most lyrical sounds when his fingers dug in, lifting the diva out of the cool water and onto the narrowness of his waist.

Christine kept up the semblance of rhythm between their meshed mouths, her own fingers doing their quiet inventory of his broad back and long neck right up to the close-cropped wealth of hair. Her legs twined tight around him, holding her high from the ground as she clung to his solid body.

They broke off – chests heaving as they fought for breath. The young woman felt the slick fabric of his mask as his face pressed into the length of her neck. Silence followed and the two remained still – locked in their embrace. A moment felt as fragile as glass and both feared that if they even breathed too loud it would shatter.

Tears mingled and Erik couldn't tell who they belonged to – the intensity of the moment was carrying away all reason.

* * *

_A.N – All credit goes to Gaston Leroux, Susan Kay, and Andrew Lloyd Webber for their respective ownership of the content used._


End file.
